gjdonatiello
Fornax Dwarf globular clusters
Fornax globular clusters
Credit: DESI LIS, Giuseppe Donatiello
Fornax dwarf is one of the first satellite galaxies of the Milky Way to be discovered in 1938 by Harlow Shapley. It is located at 140 kpc (430,000 light years). Since the discovery, six sources were considered possible globular clusters but never concretely confirmed until 2019, when they were verified in the DES images.
Beyond all reasonable doubt, they were true clusters and not random groupings of stars. Five of them are globular clusters and one an open cluster of low brightness.
The 4 brighter clusters (Fornax H2, H3, H4, H5) all looked with bright cores. Fornax H1 is faint and appeared quite dim and roundish. About Fornax 6 - reported in 1939 paper on the Sculptor and Fornax systems - Harlow Shapley noted a "very faint cluster of unidentified character, mag 16.6; at 2h 35m 56', -34° 51' (1900), which is probably a part of the Fornax system."
Perhaps this composition is the first for the public to show them together.
Acknowledgments
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) data are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (“CC BY 4.0”, Summary, Full Legal Code). Users are free to share, copy, redistribute, adapt, transform and build upon the DESI data available through this website for any purpose, including commercially.
This image used data obtained with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). DESI construction and operations is managed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High-Energy Physics, under Contract No. DE–AC02–05CH11231, and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract. Additional support for DESI was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Astronomical Sciences under Contract No. AST-0950945 to the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACYT); the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (MICINN), and by the DESI Member Institutions: www.desi.lbl.gov/collaborating-institutions. The DESI collaboration is honored to be permitted to conduct scientific research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to the Tohono O’odham Nation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, or any of the listed funding agencies.
Fornax Dwarf globular clusters
Fornax globular clusters
Credit: DESI LIS, Giuseppe Donatiello
Fornax dwarf is one of the first satellite galaxies of the Milky Way to be discovered in 1938 by Harlow Shapley. It is located at 140 kpc (430,000 light years). Since the discovery, six sources were considered possible globular clusters but never concretely confirmed until 2019, when they were verified in the DES images.
Beyond all reasonable doubt, they were true clusters and not random groupings of stars. Five of them are globular clusters and one an open cluster of low brightness.
The 4 brighter clusters (Fornax H2, H3, H4, H5) all looked with bright cores. Fornax H1 is faint and appeared quite dim and roundish. About Fornax 6 - reported in 1939 paper on the Sculptor and Fornax systems - Harlow Shapley noted a "very faint cluster of unidentified character, mag 16.6; at 2h 35m 56', -34° 51' (1900), which is probably a part of the Fornax system."
Perhaps this composition is the first for the public to show them together.
Acknowledgments
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) data are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (“CC BY 4.0”, Summary, Full Legal Code). Users are free to share, copy, redistribute, adapt, transform and build upon the DESI data available through this website for any purpose, including commercially.
This image used data obtained with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). DESI construction and operations is managed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High-Energy Physics, under Contract No. DE–AC02–05CH11231, and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract. Additional support for DESI was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Astronomical Sciences under Contract No. AST-0950945 to the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACYT); the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (MICINN), and by the DESI Member Institutions: www.desi.lbl.gov/collaborating-institutions. The DESI collaboration is honored to be permitted to conduct scientific research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to the Tohono O’odham Nation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, or any of the listed funding agencies.